Housing Market In Idaho, Mountain West May Be Cooling Off

Hot housing markets like Boise may be starting to see a cool down as interest rates rise and supply increases.

Originally published on October 8, 2018 5:26 pm

Our region is home to some of the hottest housing markets in the country but that trend may slowing down.

Escalating house prices in cities like Boise, Salt Lake City or Missoula are largely due to frenetic growth.

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“Because you have more demand for housing and the supply is more limited,” says Sarah Mikhitarian, senior economist with the real estate tech company Zillow. She expects to see home prices continue to climb, but she says there is some good news on the horizon for home shoppers — there seems to be a slight slowdown in pricing acceleration.

For example, earlier this year in Boise, home prices were climbing at the rate of 13 or 14 percent, according to Zillow data.

“And now they’ve slowed down to 11 percent,” says Mikhitarian. “So we anticipate that gradually over the next year or so home values will start to slow down a little bit.”

She says the cool off could be due to a number of things -- more houses coming on the market, rising interest rates, and some home buyers simply being priced out.

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, Yellowstone Public Radio in Montana, KUER in Salt Lake City and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado.

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